In 2012, London is gearing up to host the Olympic Summer Games. But in a
neighbourhood along the route of the Olympic torch, children are vanishing
in broad daylight. Investigating, the Doctor and Rose come to believe that
the person responsible is a young girl named Chloe. But how can a
seemingly ordinary child possess power of such magnitude? And who will be
her next victim?

Production

For the initial run of the new Doctor Who series, the production
team were able to commissioning no more scripts than were necessary to
make up the season. This caused difficulties midway through production,
when other obligations caused Paul Abbott to abandon the episode he had
been working on, and executive producer Russell T Davies was forced to
write Boom Town at short notice. For the
2006 season, however, Davies and his team had the latitude to develop
more than the requisite number of scripts. That way, they would have an
episode ready to be inserted into the schedule should another writer run
into difficulties; otherwise, it could simply be held over until the
third season.

One writer approached to develop a reserve script was Matthew Graham.
Graham had created the time travel series Life On Mars (with Tony
Jordan and Ashley Pharoah) and the postapocalyptic drama The Last
Train, and had also written for programmes such as Hustle and
Spooks. Meeting with Davies and executive producer Julie Gardner
in late August 2005, Graham suggested a storyline in which the Doctor
and Rose are faced with a man who has discovered how to drain things of
their beauty, leaving his planet a sterile grey landscape. Davies,
however, preferred his own suggestion: an episode in which the eerie
nature of paintings or illustrations plays a major role. Graham agreed
to develop this notion further, in a script which would be intentionally
low-budget to ensure its versatility. Graham was commissioned on August
31st.

The Isolus was inspired by the titular villains in the
1978 version of Invasion Of The Body
Snatchers

For the Isolus, Graham was inspired by the spore-like realisation of the
titular villains in the 1978 version of Invasion Of The Body
Snatchers. He was also eager to set his story in a normal,
believable environment, drawing on the typical young fan's desire to see
the TARDIS materialise on their street. Graham initially called his
script “Chloe Webber Destroys The Earth” and then
“You're A Bad Girl, Chloe Webber”, but both of these were
rejected by Davies as being too lengthy. Ultimately, it was decided to
call the episode Fear Her, despite the fact that this felt like a
deviation from the Doctor Who norm.

Meanwhile, Stephen Fry had been pencilled in to write a story referred
to as “The 1920s” for the eleventh slot of Doctor
Who's 2006 season. By November, however, it had become clear that
Fry's script would be too expensive -- especially late in the production
schedule -- and the decision was made to postpone it until 2007, when
it could be properly budgeted. (Ultimately, however, it was dropped
altogether because Fry was too busy on other projects to carry out the
necessary rewrites). With the development of Graham's story already well
under way, “The 1920s” was replaced with Fear
Her. Although “The 1920s” had originally been intended
to be part of the season's sixth recording block, its loss (and
difficulties with The Impossible Planet /
The Satan Pit) had resulted in a rearrangement of the latter
part of the production schedule. Fear Her now joined The Idiot's Lantern as Block Four, directed
by Euros Lyn.

The principal location for Fear Her was Page Drive, in the
Tremorfa area of Cardiff, which posed as Dame Kelly Holmes Close; many
scenes in the Webber home were also filmed in a house on the same
street. Cast and crew worked on Page Drive from January 24th to 27th and
again on the 30th and 31st. Due to the frigid temperatures belying the
story's summer setting, dialogue was introduced regarding the Isolus
draining heat from the area. Also filmed on the 27th were the Doctor's
run up the Olympic Stadium steps and shots of its empty interior
(actually Cardiff's Millennium Stadium), as well as footage of the
torchbearer running through London streets (recorded near Cardiff City
Hall). Originally, Lyn had hoped to cast Olympic gold medallist Kelly
Holmes herself as the torchbearer -- taking his cue from Graham's script
-- but she was committed at the time to appearing in the reality series
Dancing On Ice.

There was hope that Olympic gold medallist Kelly Holmes
might be cast as the torchbearer

Four days at the regular Doctor Who studio space of Unit Q2 in
Newport then followed, from February 1st to 4th. The principal sets were
the TARDIS and Chloe's bedroom, as well as the stairs and landing in the
Webber house. On February 6th, several locations around Cardiff were
visited, including Chapman's Removals & Storage Yard (the area where the
TARDIS materialises), St Albans Rugby Club (for the Doctor lighting the
Olympic flame) and finally back to Page Drive. This left only various
pick-up shots to be completed. These included the pod landing in the
Olympic torch, filmed on Blenheim Road in Pen-y-lan, Cardiff on February
10th, and material at Unit Q2: Chloe drawing (actually performed by art
student Tinate Bilal) on the 15th, the cat entering the box on the 22nd,
and the TARDIS scanner on the 23rd.

For his TARDISode, writer Gareth Roberts envisioned a
Crimewatch-style report on the children's disappearances -- but
done in a more sensationalistic, American style, to connote Fear
Her's 2012 setting. Great difficulty was encountered in actually
finding a suitable name for the faux programme which would avoid any
trademark problems. Ultimately, Roberts opted for CrimeCrackers
because its rights were already owned by the BBC, and permission could
be sought for its use. Filming for the TARDISode occurred during
production on the episode itself, on January 31st at Page Drive. The
54-second installment concluded with a shot of the drawing of Chloe's
father.